


Human After All

by Misterkingdom



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:37:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misterkingdom/pseuds/Misterkingdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What are you talking about?” The android, DRN whatever the fuck he was said. “You don’t like the way I say things?”</p>
<p>Yes. No. I really do. “Yeah, well—forget it.” The DRN lets this drop and the pressure is out of John’s chest. It’s not the DRN’s fault John’s been celibate so long he could qualify for the goddamn priesthood. It’s not Dorian’s fault John reads everything that drips from those dusty pink lips as some sort of come on. He can blame his fucked up psychology for that one—and maybe the Captain for saddling him with the Ken doll with a heart of gold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human After All

**Author's Note:**

> 1) This was supposed to be a quick ditty. It turned into a long...Thing.   
> 2) I think I made John too much like McCoy. Forgive me.   
> 3) This show was boring as I don't know what, so I didn't watch it. I just couldn't get these two characters out of my head..Especially the Michael Ealy character. Yum.

 “You like everything hard.” Dorian says as he watches the laser show of taillights that made up the Queensboro bridge after dark. John Kennex curls his fingers around the gearshift, using a somewhat inhuman grunt as an answer. He moved into the left lane, cutting off a swanky sports car. A blaring honk signified the displeasure of the vehicle behind him. He flicks his flashers just once—he’s a cop, damn it. He could do what he wants.

“Something bothering you, man?” His blue eyed headache of a partner is watching him with all the subtle judgment of the goddamn psychiatrist he was supposed to see last May. The light pollution of the city struck from Dorian’s window, covering his beautiful, ridiculous disco ball of a face in shadow. It served to soften the sharp cut of his cheekbones. In the acid green dashboard lights, he looks almost human.

John’s ‘no’s always had a way of sounding like yes’s.  He does his best imitation of Lurch and grunts again. He’s being stupid or willfully ignorant to think Pinocchio here is going to let it die, but he tries anyway, focusing all the pent up electricity in his stomach on driving. ~~~~

“C’mon, man—we’re partners.” Dorian can never hide the one hundred watt smile on his face when he says ‘partners’. Like he can’t hold back the glee of John finally acknowledging it. John refuses to think it’s cute. “You can tell me anything. Besides, your blood pressure as risen—“

“Of course you’ve scanned me.” He didn’t know it was possible to hike his shoulders any higher. “Didn’t we talk about this kind of _Hal 9000_ behavior?”

“Sorry.” The smirk on his face says he isn’t. John lets this one slide. “Well, you’ve got a lot of tension. I can help you out with it, if you want.”

“Why do you say things like that?” The words spilled out without his permission. “In that tone?” He doesn’t have to look at Dorian to see his smooth face twinkling on the passenger window. John’s stomach knots up. He takes a deep breath.

“What are you talking about?” The android, DRN whatever the fuck he was said. “You don’t like the way I say things?”

_Yes. No. I really do._ “Yeah, well—forget it.” The DRN lets this drop and the pressure is out of John’s chest. It’s not the DRN’s fault John’s been celibate so long he could qualify for the goddamn priesthood. It’s not Dorian’s fault John reads everything that drips from those dusty pink lips as some sort of come on. He can blame his fucked up psychology for that one—and maybe the Captain for saddling him with the Ken doll with a heart of gold.

The press of heat in what passes for summer in the big apple causes his window the fog up, signifying a summer’s rain is approaching. They sit in silence while they veer off the highway into some scummy alleyway no doubt filled with glassy eyed girls that needed to be rounded up before they could hurt themselves. The DRN has a matte look in his eyes that shows he’s off somewhere faraway in technology land.

Dorian didn’t press him the one time John wishes he had.

*

His grandmother spoke of dusty paneling, strong ass brown beers and jukeboxes playing sinister guitars. A time when people went to bars to interact with another human being, not to show off their latest, dolled up synthetics. If there is a God, he defiantly didn’t make it so he’d have to suffer through these pink florescent, fruity abominations of a drink.

John nods when a synthetic in drag refills the haloing drink. He’s been sandwiched between to 9-to-5ers since the open sign winked on. He’s on his fourth—maybe sixth—beverage. It’s becoming difficult to see individuals, the liquor causing the patrons to turn into a knot of greasy, neon lit bottom feeders.  

His thoughts float to a certain DRN with the ocean in his eyes. John never asked what it is Dorian does when it’s time to turn in.

He calls it a night when he propositioned by ‘twin’ synthetics.

*

The cab ride home is a very special adventure. While he was drifting in and out of consciousness, the driver might’ve given him a play by play of his recent vasectomy. It was a harrowing tale from start to finish, but John was too out of it to recall most of the gory details.

His house is too damn spacious when he stumbles in, his lead leg not cooperating with his inebriated state. The itch of cold, recycled air against his skin caused him to let out a whimper. He clicked the door shut and lent his head against the wood, the whirls of gears turning into place. He needed his head to stop spinning.

“Hey.” John’s heart picked up, turning around and trying to gain night vision. Dorian’s florescent eyes in the darkness caught his.

“On.” John said, hoping Dorian didn’t catch his mini-panic attack. The yellow light floods his room, revealing the DRN who didn’t even shield his eyes from the brightness. He sat on the sofa, hunched over so his elbows were on his knees.

John got intervention vibes. He goes straight to his bare refrigerator and gets one of his last bottles of Wild Turkey out. The electronic gaze climbs up his spine as he empties half the liquor. The thing is scanning him again, goddamn it.

“Out with it.” His voice is gritty with the burn of exhaustion and the jolly rancher tasting shit he had down at the bar. He turns toward the DRN, who’s now leaning over the kitchen island. John bites his tongue before he could ask the stupid question of how he got over there so fast. Dorian is wearing his normal ‘you’re losing your shit, let me be a condescending asshole’ expression.

“I can’t stop thinking about the conversation in the car, man.” He laces his fingers together and rests his chin on his knuckles. For the pinnacle of modern technology, he sure does slouch a lot. John crosses his arms, a hangover or a stroke or something equally terrifying already threating him. “I know something’s bothering you.

“Besides the fact I got a windup doll for a partner who breaks into my house?” John tries to enunciate his words. He doesn’t want to slur and have his nastiness miss its intended target. Dorian purses his lips like John had called him a synthetic. John wishes he had.

“Does it bother you that I’m like this?” Dorian’s watching his own reflection in the scratched marble of the island. His face isn’t lighting up so he must want an honest answer. One John can’t give him.

“Sometimes.” He settles on. John doesn’t say he loves Dorian with the hole he carved out for Anna. He doesn’t say he suspects the synthetic is toying with him, compiling a psyche study to shuck to the captain. He also doesn’t say he has his suspicions even if the synthetic is being sincere—that he doesn’t understand what he’s saying.

He carefully doesn’t say his love for him is like the equivalent of loving a Ken doll.

Dorian’s actually looking at him this time, not scanning him like a price tag. “Okay.”

“Not for the ways you think.” John drains the rest of the bottle, leaves it on the counter and goes around the island, avoiding physical contact with the DRN. He drops down on the sofa, hoping this’ll be the end of it. The liquor has made his tongue loose.  

For a second, it looks like Dorian is going to leave. Instead he turns to lean against the door, cross his arms and eye John with a blank expression—scanning.

“Okay, cupcake.” John straightens his back and squares his shoulders. “If I tell you what I’m thinking, would you stop trying to guess?”

The suggestion of a smile plays on Dorian’s dusty pink lips. “I’m game.”

“I’m thinking that I’ve been a prick to you and I should apologize.” John stretches until something pops. Dorian is about to say something, but John cuts him off. “Listen up, disco face. Because I’m too drunk to care and I’ll never say this again—my bad.”

Dorian smiles and watches his feet. John tries to think of everything besides those lips. “It’s not better than x-raying you, but it’s a start.”

John’s stomach knots. Dorian had to have at least an inkling of what he was saying. He’s trapping Dorian against the door before he knows it, his hands on either said of the DRN’s head. Dorian’s recycled breath makes warm puffs on his lower lip.

John closes the gap between them so their chests are pressed together, their lips inches apart. If Dorian was human, his heart would’ve picked up, his skin would be heated, like Anna’s used to. This thought sends acid down to his core.

“You ever going to make good on all this flirting?” He moves his hand to the small of the DRN’s back, pulling him even closer. Dorian’s just a tool for whatever John wants to use him for. He doesn’t have real emotions. He doesn’t have a real anything.

Dorian inches back as northern lights play across the valleys of his cheekbones. John could practically feel the whir of gadgets all working together to form a response. John presses his nose into the apex where Dorian’s head and neck meet. He breathes in the burnt smell of leftover coffee the DRN absorbed from doing all his work in the break room.

“Detective Kennex, you are inebriated.” Whenever Dorian feels what John perceives as ‘uncomfortable’ he gets a dead eyed stare and resorts to talking like those toy Nazi soldiers at the precinct. He also get still and heavy so John has to work his arm under Dorian’s clamp like one to reach the nape of the DRN’s neck. He presses his lips against Dorian’s pink ones, keeping his eyes open to watch the cluster of stars expand in Dorian’s eyes. The DRN pushes back experimentally, tongue realer than anything John’s felt in a long time.

John inches back to watch the sea in the DRN’s eyes. Dorian is crackling like some celestial God, all alert, his fingers clasping around John’s. “You’re so lifelike.” John whispers the phrase into his skin like a secret, dragging his lips across Dorian’s cheekbones. “If you’re any kind of warm blooded man, you’d feel something—fight or fuck.” John takes this chance to let his hands roam up the DRN’s shirt. His dies are sculpted like the statue of *David. John sucks in a breath when he reaches the hard muscles of the DRN’s lower stomach.

“I feel something.” Dorian’s own hand travels up the hill of John’s arms until he gets to his face. His smooth thumb traces slow circles into John’s jaw. The trail leads to his lips and Dorian pulls, fascinated by John’s face.

“You want to be human? Making a big mistake with a buddy is the most you can get.” John presses his lips to Dorian’s once more, but the DRN doesn’t respond. He has that dead eyed look again, only this time his lips are placed into a skeptical frown, like he knows John is talking shit but is too polite to call him on it. He pushes their hips together until there’s a thud against the door, making Dorian feel the brunt of his want.  “You feel this?”

Dorian is still blank, but his fingers clench around John’s bicep. “Yes.”

“Then you can prove to me that you’re a man and not some prettied up doll.”

“Is this what you want?”

“Sure is, bright eyes.”

They’re pressed in John’s bed fore he knows it; clothes shed on the floor amongst the empty Chinese food containers. Dorian is…correct in every place he can get his greedy fingers on and he can’t get is hands everywhere fast enough. He’s warm as sin, body temperature up so much if he were indeed a human; he’d be in the emergency room right now. John is giving him to quarter, kissing as hard as he can. Dorian gives as good as he gets, his hands carding through John’s hair and filling his mouth with simulated moans.

John pulls back from Dorian and puts most of his weight on is elbows beside the DRN’s head. He presses his knee between Dorian’s smooth thighs. Dorian’s clear eyes shimmer in the low light. This shade of blue isn’t accompanied by the twirls of light usually climbing up his face. Just pure, open curiosity. The stare makes him itch. Dorian’s lips are parted, his breath is labored, giving John the allusion he was as lust drunk as he was.

“How’re we going to pull this off?” John whispers into his temple. Dorian shivers. John suspects he’s playing the part of the wanton lover and might not actually feel this way—like a sex doll. John pushes it down. He wants to enjoy something for once.

“In ancient Greece there was this thing called intercrural sex.” Dorian says it like he had the solution planned out before this whole affair began. He put one of his hands behind his head and stared past John into the ceiling. John took this moment to nip at his jugular. “It’s when one partner puts their—“

“I know what it is.” His response is muted into the DRN’s skin. It’s one of the few things he knew about ancient Greece, though he couldn’t remember why he knows it. The concept isn’t as important as practice anyway.

Dorian’s hands are supernova hot as they travel up his spine, to the dips in his back and to his shoulders. The firm lips press against John’s. They hold there, none of them willing to break the stillness of the moment, not even to let their tongues meet. John pulls back when the burning in his lungs tell him to.

Dorian puts his palm to the middle of John’s chest. John gets the hint and rolls over to lie on his back. His head hits his lumpy pillow as he stares up at the mosaic of water stains on his ceiling. His bed rolls with movement and John lets himself be rocked. He measures the weight of the total weirdness about what he was going to do against the raging erection poking against his stomach.

There are sex androids, feminine, masculine and everything in between under the city of neon lights. It’s not shameful to want the sticky stutter of hips, the press of a body when there’s no human available. Hell, it’s not even looked down on as much as seeking out the real thing was in the first half of the 21st century.

The trouble is he’s about to have some ‘ancient Greek’ sex with his partner. A partner he’s gotten very close to, a partner he’s not even sure wants it. He wants to ask if this is really what the DRN wants, but the words get stuck on his tongue like syrup.

John’s hips snap up when Dorian’s fingers encircle his cock, a wet warm sticky substance coating his fingers. John’s tongues the roof of his mouth as his hands twists in the sheets to keep from crying out. The hot pit of his stomach already starting to uncurl. Dorian’s face for the most part is impassive but there’s a sparkle of fascination on his cheeks when John leaks into his hand. John needs more of the delicious friction; he’ll be embarrassed in the morning with half of New York.

Dorian watches John like he’s compiling a case. John takes in the wonderful nudity of the DRN’s toned chest, the heat of his hand and almost loses it.

Dorian removes his hands and doesn’t waste any time climbing over John’s body. He covers his mouth with his own, drinking in John’s grunts and sighs as he rocks against him. He pulls back and lies on his side as if waiting for John to get the hint.

John grits his teeth against the sudden cold front. He wraps his arms around Dorian’s flat stomach and pulls him so his back is pressed tight against John’s chest. He’s never ready for the searing press of skin on skin. This pushes him closer to the edge. Dorian presses his lips to John’s hand while the other one snake his way up his ribcage and under his arm while John finds the spot he’s been looking for. He slides himself between the slick thighs of the DRN, hissing against the tight heat.

It’s almost everything he wanted. The stuttering of skin, the obscene slap of skin in the dark. What’s missing is the gasps and whines of his partner. He’s too sex stupid to care if he’s in nirvana by himself, groaning into a silent room like some sort of high class masturbation act. All he cares about is the slick heat and meeting his release.

The edges of his vision go white as he finds it, grasping onto Dorian’s hips with enough strength to bruise as he comes. He breathes into the crook of Dorian’s neck trying to get the energy to move. The wet tongue of the DRN laps at John’s thumb. John’s voice is stuck somewhere between the sleeping and waking world.

*

Dawn finds him sprawled on top of the covers, sticky and naked with a bitchin’ headache and his synthetic leg detached. The shades—even the ones that were forever crooked and let a slither of light peak past—were drawn, covering the room in darkness. His body creaks in protest when he turned to lie on his side. His hands reach out, looking to find hot skin, taut rolling muscles. Instead he touches sheets weighted down with the evidence of their sin.

It takes a minute for him to find his prosthetic leg. Dorian had apparently detached it for him and sat it a close distance to his bed. It takes another three minutes to get coordinated enough to reach and attach it. He eats those minutes with his stomach knotted like a fist.

His worry is validated when he goes into the living room and finds it empty. Dorian had gone because John was an insensitive prick.

He’d used him like a sex doll and thrown him away. Rejection is something the DRN carried with him every day since he was decommissioned all those years ago. Something so universal, so human. How did John ever doubt him in the first place?

The coffee machine beeped in the dark living room as John went to support himself with the back of the couch. Through the pain, the hurt, the rejection—Dorian was human after all.


End file.
